She had to do something, to throw herself off the bed, to escape from the room, to escape from the house.

Escape from the predator.

Her thoughts were cut off as she felt another blow strike her back, another flash of pain sear her body.

Another scream rose in her throat and erupted into the darkness, and she threw herself over, struggling to flee from the bed and the attacker and the room and the house. But as she twisted around, her eyes locked onto the face that loomed above her.

“No!” she cried. But though she’d screamed as loud as she could, her voice was already reduced to a rattling gasp.

Then, above the face, the knife in the man’s hand caught the moonlight, and for a moment that seemed an eternity, it hovered above her, glowing darkly with her own blood.

“No,” she said again, the word this time no more than a weak plea, and as it died in the night, the knife began to descend.

She watched it arc toward her, her eyes following the blade as it sank into her breast. For a second she felt nothing more than the heaviness of the blow as the fist that clutched the knife struck her chest. It wasn’t until the knife was yanked free of her flesh that the searing heat struck her.

“No…” she sighed once more as the knife rose high yet again.

This time she felt nothing as the blade plunged into her, for already her spirit had escaped her body.

For a moment the woman watched from high above, free from the pain, the cold, and the darkness of the night. Again and again the blade flashed down, slashing at the corpse that now lay still upon her bed. But the spirit hovering high above the bed was no longer concerned with the body that had once been hers. Now she thought only of another.

Her daughter… her little girl… the child she could no longer protect.

Too late… too late…

The eternal darkness swallowed her soul as her husband finished his grisly task…